A recent rehabilitation theory, the ‘Good Lives Model’ (GLM), states that interventions that work towards a higher well-being can reduce recidivism risk more sustainably by promising a happier, pro-social life, rather than just a less harmful one. Although the GLM theory appears promising, limited empirical research has examined its underlying assumptions, applicability and its effectiveness. Research into the GLM with youth is even more limited. Therefore, in the current study, we investigate the main etiological assumptions of the GLM in a large group of adolescents between 14 and 18 years old from the general population (N=5.776), by means of self-report survey data on well-being, primary human goods and delinquency. The results show that a lower subjective global well-being is related to delinquent behavior. Especially the primary human goods of relatedness and working towards a financially stable future appear to be important goals for interventions aimed at rehabilitation of juvenile offenders.

How can technological tools contribute to supervising and reintegrating offenders in society? Globally, technological tools for supervision are broken down into so-called first generation (GPS tracking) and second generation (smartphone and sensor technology). An overview is given of what is globally known about the effectiveness and assumed mechanisms of action of first-generation technical tools. Then it is explored what added value second-generation technical aids can have and to which working mechanisms they could connect. Smartphone and sensor technology have the potential to contribute to the rehabilitation functions of the supervision, inter alia because they offer possibilities for more personalized supervision and for the combination of supervision and treatment. Although initiatives have been started in this regard and research is ongoing, hardly anything is known yet about the effectiveness of these new technological applications. The reliability and safety of IT, as well as ethical and legal aspects also require attention.

Working in the forensic social field is interesting and fulfilling and many professionals deliberately choose to do this work. However, it can also be a very demanding job. Experiencing aggressive incidents by forensic clients, continuous tensions in contact with clients and the confrontation with narratives about shocking events are specific characteristics of working in the forensic field that appeal to the resilience of professionals. This article discusses which characteristics of organisations, teams and individual professionals impact on resilience and how it can be enhanced.

A well-established body of epidemiological research suggests that the prevalence of mental health problems (mental disorders, psychological distress, and substance use) in prisoner populations far exceeds that of non-incarcerated people in the surrounding community. Poor mental health in prisoners is associated with multiple adverse outcomes, including suicidal behaviour. In the past decade, novel data in Belgium and the Netherlands have been published on this topic, which have not been synthesized to date. The aim of the current systematic literature review was to provide an up-to-date overview of the mental health of prisoners in Belgium and the Netherlands. Based on 24 empirical studies conducted in 1997-2018, the authors conclude that people with mental health problems are overrepresented in Belgian and Dutch prisons, providing both a challenge and a public health opportunity to address the mental health care needs of a vulnerable and hard-to-engage population. Investing in the prevention and treatment of mental health problems not only benefits the prisoners concerned, but equally, society at large.

Around 36.000 men enter Dutch prisons every year. Nearly half of them are father. Imprisonment is destructive to father involvement. Many prisoners involuntary fail to stay connected with their family and are unable to reconnect with family after release. However, father involvement protects fragile families, children and fathers themselves from collateral consequences of imprisonment and even reduces recidivism. One of the first Dutch initiatives for fathers in prison came from voluntary organization Exodus. Since 2014, they run an 8-week workshop on fatherhood in a number of Dutch penal institutions. Fathers work on the restoration or reconstruction of their relationship with their children and parenting partners. In this article, we review participating fathers’ perceptions of the workshop and the changes in their attitude towards fatherhood.

Reducing the number of suicides in prison has been highlighted as an international priority. To date, however, studies examining prison suicides in Belgium are lacking. Therefore, adopting a retrospective record-based approach, we sought to investigate all suicides occurring in the whole Belgian prison estate during a 17-year period. The results underline the need for suicide prevention among prisoners in Belgium, and echo prior findings that restrictive preventive measures should be combined with psychosocial interventions in order to address the causes of prisoners being suicidal. Such strategies are ideally embedded within a comprehensive suicide prevention policy on a national level.

This contribution summarizes findings from the Prison Project on the longitudinal course of mental health problems during imprisonment. The findings illustrate that prisoners experience high levels of mental health problems. Shortly after their arrival in detention, a quarter of them experienced a high level of mental health problems, which is five times as high as men in the general population. Prisoners’ mental health problems decreased during imprisonment. Both characteristics of the correctional environment (e.g. a fair and respectful treatment by prison staff) and pre-existing characteristics of the prisoners (e.g. personality traits) are related to the course of mental health problems in detention.

Prison staff is exposed to aggression of prisoners which evokes work stress. In forensic psychiatry risk management principles, such as the Risk-Needs-Responsivity-model (RNR), assist staff to manage aggression by means applying risk management strategies. The Early Recognition Method (ERM) is such an evidence based strategy, developed and tested in forensic psychiatry. In ERM, staff gradually try to attune to aggressive behavior by means of the identification of early warning signs of aggression and systematically evaluated these in predetermined intervals. In this article it is explained and discussed how ERM could be applied meaningfully in prison services.

The theory of retribution is a central tenet in Malawian sentencing jurisprudence. Courts have given expression to retribution in various ways, most conspicuously through the recognition of the principle of proportionality as the most important principle in sentencing. Retribution has permeated courts’ consideration of certain sentencing factors such as the seriousness of the offence, family obligations and public opinion. Overall, retribution rightly plays a pivotal role in Malawian sentencing jurisprudence by elevating the principle of proportionality to the most important principle in sentencing. Malawian courts have also noted that whether in pursuit of retribution or utilitarianism, the ultimate objective is to arrive at a sentence that is just and fair in relation to the crime and the offender. This also ensures that the sentence imposed does not offend the prohibition of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

The Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency (DJI) strives for a more restorative prison culture in the Netherlands, incorporating a more victim-oriented and restorative way of working in prisons. To this end, DJI has asked for a plan and process evaluation of three restorative courses among (juvenile and adult) prisoners in the Netherlands: Puinruimen, SOS and DAPPER. This article first offers an overview of the most important findings of this evaluation which was finalized in 2016. Based on the findings of the plan evaluation, a cautious yet clearly positive picture emerges of the design and substantiation of each of the three courses examined. That is, an extensive description and substantiation exists of each course. In addition, evidence exists in the (limited) scientific literature for one of the goals that each of these courses have formulated: to increase prisoners’ awareness of the consequences of crime for victims. The literature also suggests that creating trust among participants and a safe group process during the course is helpful in attaining the goals formulated. The process evaluation of the execution of the three courses in practice further strengthens the cautious, yet positive picture painted by the plan evaluation. An examination of the experiences of the courses’ participants lends further support to the observation that these courses can attain part of their goals. For example, after the course participants were more positive about the added value of victim-offender mediation for them personally than before.
Aside from these findings, this article also argues for a deeper consideration of the constructive roles that both emotions guilt and shame can play in the restorative process of prisoners during these courses. The article ends with a number of recommendations for restorative courses in prison and a sketch of the current state of affairs in the Netherlands regarding these courses.

This paper examines the relationship between imprisonment length and registered recidivism. The data come from a unique longitudinal and nationwide study of Dutch male prisoners, serving an average of 4.1 months of confinement (N=1,467). Ideally an experimental design would be appropriate to examine the influence of different sentence lengths on recidivism. In order to approximate such a design using observational data, we adopt a propensity score methodology to control for selection bias in the dose-response relationship. Using a six-month follow-up, we do not find significant differences in post-release recidivism between men who spent shorter or longer periods of time in confinement. We discuss the pros and cons of the methodology applied as well as potential implications of the findings.

This article discusses the importance of reflection for prison staff. Their work is both physical and emotionally incriminating. That increases risk on turnover, burn-out, psychosomatic diseases and negative experiences with prisoners. To render all challenges in their work it’s important to build up resiliency. One of the means to stimulate resilience is organized reflection. It is described how guided by experts, reflecting on own experiences can contribute to resilience of prison employees and strengthen their learning capacity. That is done by literature study and a description of experiences with organized reflection in PI Vught.

This article presents an overview of the legal regime provided in the Spanish system of criminal sanctions regarding the control of dangerous sex offenders in the community. It focuses on the introduction, in 2010, of a post-prison safety measure named supervised release. We describe the context of its introduction in the Spanish Criminal Code, considering the influence of societal upheaval concerning dangerous sex offenders in its development, and also the historical and theoretical features of the Spanish system of criminal sanctions. We also analyse the legal framework of supervised release, the existing case law about it and how the legal doctrine has until now assessed this measure. After this analysis, the main aim of this article consists in evaluating the effectiveness and the proportionality of the measure, according to the principle of minimal constraints and the rehabilitative function of the criminal sanctions in Spanish law, stated in Article 25.2 of the Spanish Constitution.

Although group workers in juvenile correctional facilities (JCFs) are restricted in their actions by many rules and regulations, they still have the opportunity for tailor-made actions. Based on Lipsky’s (2010) theory of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ this article explains what this discretion means for group workers in JCFs and how they deal with it. Based on 24 interviews with group workers, this article outlines how they exercise discretion in a context where group dynamics and dealing with emotions affect their actions to an important degree. In addition, this article describes how group workers deal with dilemmas they encounter.

Studies indicated that detainees are not always allocated to treatment programs based on official guidelines. Street-level bureaucracy theory suggests that this is because government employees do not always perform policies as prescribed. This study aimed to assess whether this also applies to the allocation of offenders to treatment in Dutch penitentiary institutions. This was studied among a group of 541 male prisoners who participated in the Recidivism Reduction program. The results showed that official policy guidelines were, in most cases, not leading when referring detainees to behavioral interventions. Instead, treatment referrals were influenced by a broad range of risk factors, as well as the length of an offender’s sentence.

Sensitive interviews involve emotionally difficult topics which require participants to face issues that are deeply personal and possibly distressing. This paper draws together reflections concerning how researchers manage the challenges of conducting sensitive interviews, including the author’s own reflections concerning interviewing clinical negligence claimants. First, it examines the ethical guidelines that regulate sensitive research, and the challenges of obtaining informed consent and maintaining confidentiality. Ethical guidelines, however, provide limited assistance for ensuring the emotional care of research participants, and we also consider challenges that are not usually formally regulated. These include preparing for the interview, and then ensuring the emotional care of participants both during and after the interview itself. Sensitive research also raises deeper ethical issues concerning the negotiation of relations between researcher and participant, especially when this relationship is unequal. Finally, while previous research has generally focused on the need to take emotional care of research participants, less attention has been given to the emotional needs of researchers. It is argued that support systems for researchers are too often ad hoc, and that providing support is often not a priority of granting bodies, grant holders or supervisors, and that formal systems need to be put in place.

How many hours a night do I sleep? What is my average resting heart rate? How physical active am I during the day? Self-monitoring with help of technological devices, including smartphones, mobile applications and electronic sensors, allow individuals to quantify biometrics that they never knew existed. During the last decade, the ‘quantified-self’ movement has become popular among hobbyists, but also among professionals in the medical field. In this article the authors explore the potentials of quantified-self devices for the criminal justice setting. Could, for example, skin conductance measurements help to improve self-awareness among aggressive patients? And could biofeedback intervention with help of a mobile application serve as an alternative intervention program for those who are currently not responsive to traditional correctional therapy? On the other hand, what are the limitations and perhaps ethical concerns when implementing quantified-self devices in the criminal justice setting?

In this article we examine which factors are correlated to the rehabilitation of prisoners. Central is the prisoners’ willingness during their imprisonment to work on a successful return in society. Assumptions derived from the theory were statistically tested with data from the Dutch Detainee Survey 2014; a large-scale study, in which prisoners held in all Dutch penitentiary institutions (N = 29) were surveyed (n = 2120). The results are in line with the theory and show that detainees are more positive about their (potential for) rehabilitation when they are more satisfied with a) the way they are treated by correctional officers (staff orientation); b) active deployment of the so-called Detention and Re-integration Plan; c) their daily program and activities, and; d) the experienced autonomy and personal decision-making. These outcomes offer fruitful perspectives on how the prison system can promote a successful return of prisoners in our society.

A substantial number of children are confronted with the detention of their mothers. Empirical research shows that these children’s well-being is seriously affected, although no study has been able to assess whether a mother’s detention as such causes long-term damage. On the basis of children’s interests, this article defends the principle that mothers who are actively involved in raising their children should not receive a prison sentence but an alternative punishment, unless continuing care is detrimental to the children or if the legal order or interests of society and its citizens would be disproportionally threatened. The article ends with several practical implications.